Food Safety Talk
The CDC estimated that 48 million people get sick from various foodborne illnesses in the United States each year. Of those, approximately 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.
The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) found sicknesses caused by Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), Vibrio and Yersinia increased in 2019 as compared to the three-year period between 2016 and 2018.
Foodborne illness can be managed through establishing, implementing and maintaining food safety requirments throughout the food chain, that is why HACCP has become synonymous with food safety. It is a worldwide-recognized systematic preventive approach that addresses biological, chemical, physical and allergenic hazards and establishing required control measures to prevent those hazards or reduce it to acceptable limit.
HACCP grew from two major developments tires. The first tire was associated with W.E. Deming, whose theories of quality management are widely regarded as a major factor in turning around the quality of Japanese products in the 1950s. Dr Deming and others developed total quality management (TQM) systems which emphasized a total systems approach to manufacturing that could improve quality while lowering costs. The second tire was the development of the HACCP concept itself. The HACCP concept was created in the 1960s by the Pillsbury Company, the United States Army and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a collaborative activities for the production of
safe foods for the United States space programme. NASA wanted a "zero defects" programme to guarantee the safety of the foods that astronauts would consume in space. Pillsbury therefore introduced and adopted HACCP as a tool to control food safety hazards during processing while reducing dependence on end product inspection and testing.
Pillsbury presented the HACCP concept publicly at a conference for food protection in 1971. The use of HACCP principles in the promulgation of regulations for low-acid canned food was completed in 1974 by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the early 1980s, the HACCP approach was adopted by other major food companies.
The United States National Academy of Science recommended in 1985 that the HACCP approach be adopted in food processing establishments to ensure food safety. More recently, numerous groups, including for example the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) and the International Association of Milk, Food and Environmental Sanitarians (IAMFES), have recommended the broad application of HACCP to food safety.
Recognizing the importance of HACCP to food control, the twentieth session of the Codex Aliment Arius Commission, held in Geneva, Switzerland from 28 June to 7 July 1993, adopted Guidelines for the application of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system
The commission was also informed that the draft revised General Principles of Food Hygiene would incorporate the HACCP approach.
The revised Recommended International Code of Practice - General Principles of Food Hygiene [CAC/RCP 1-1969, Rev 3 (1997)] was adopted by the Codex Aliment Arius Commission during its twenty-second session in June 1997 ….. to be followed
References:
- Center for disease control and Prevention – Estimates of foodborne Illness in the united states.
- FAO Org - THE HAZARD ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL CONTROL POINT (HACCP) SYSTEM
